St. George and St. Michael

G >> George MacDonald >> St. George and St. Michael

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'That thou art of consequence to him that made thee.'

'How can that be, when I know myself worthless? Will he be mistaken
in me?'

'No, truly. But he may have regard to that thou shalt yet be. For
surely he sent thee here to do some fitting work for him.'

More talk followed, but Dorothy did not seem to herself to find the
right thing to say, and retired to the top of the Tower with a sense
of failure, and oppressed with helpless compassion for the poor
youth.

The doctors of divinity and of medicine differed concerning the
cause of his sad condition. The doctor of medicine said it arose
entirely from a check in the circulation of the animal spirits; the
doctor of divinity thought, but did not say, only hinted, that it
came of a troubled conscience, and that he would have been well long
ago but for certain sins, known only to himself, that bore heavy
upon his life. This gave the marquis a good ground of argument for
confession, the weight of which argument was by the divine felt and
acknowledged. But both doctors were right, and both were wrong.
Could his health have been at once restored, a great reaction would
have ensued, his interest in life would have reawaked, and most
probably he would have become indifferent to that which now
oppressed him; but on the slightest weariness or disappointment, the
same overpowering sense of desolation would have returned, and
indeed at times amidst the warmest glow of health and keenest
consciousness of pleasure. On the other hand, if by any argument
addressed to his moral or religious nature his mind could have been
a little eased, his physical nature would most likely have at once
responded in improvement; but he had no individual actions of such
heavy guilt as the divine presumed to repent of, nor could any
amount or degree of sorrow for the past have sufficed to restore him
to peace and health. It was a poet of the time who wrote,

'The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made:'

sickness had done the same thing as time with Rowland, and he saw
the misery of his hovel. The cure was a deeper and harder matter
than Dr. Bayly yet understood, or than probably Rowland himself
would for years attain to, while yet the least glimmer of its
approach would be enough to initiate physical recovery.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE POET-PHYSICIAN.

Time passed, but with little change in the condition of the patient.
Winter began to draw on, and both doctors feared a more rapid
decline.

Early in the month of November, Dorothy received a letter from Mr.
Herbert, informing her that her cousin, Henry Vaughan, one of his
late twin pupils, would, on his way from Oxford, be passing near
Raglan, and that he had desired him to call upon her. Willing enough
to see her relative, she thought little more of the matter, until at
length the day was at hand, when she found herself looking for his
arrival with some curiosity as to what sort of person he might prove
of whom she had heard so often from his master.

When at length he was ushered into lady Glamorgan's parlour, where
her mistress had desired her to receive him, both her ladyship and
Dorothy were at once prejudiced in his favour. They saw a rather
tall young man of five or six and twenty, with a small head, a clear
grey eye, and a sober yet changeful countenance. His carriage was
dignified yet graceful--self-restraint and no other was evident
therein; a certain sadness brooded like a thin mist above his eyes,
but his smile now and then broke out like the sun through a grey
cloud. Dorothy did not know that he was just getting over the end of
a love-story, or that he had a book of verses just printed, and had
already begun to repent it.

After the usual greetings, and when Dorothy had heard the last news
of Mr. Herbert,--for Mr. Vaughan had made several journeys of late
between Brecknock and Oxford, taking Llangattock Rectory in his way,
and could tell her much she did not know concerning her
friend,--lady Glamorgan, who was not sorry to see her interested in
a young man whose royalist predilections were plain and strong,
proposed that Dorothy should take him over the castle.

She led him first to the top of the tower, show him the reservoir
and the prospect; but there they fell into such a talk as revealed
to Dorothy that here was a man who was her master in everything
towards which, especially since her mother's death and her following
troubles, she had most aspired, and a great hope arose in her heart
for her cousin Scudamore. For in this talk it had come out that Mr.
Vaughan had studied medicine, and was now on his way to settle for
practice at Brecknock. As soon as Dorothy learned this, she
entreated her cousin Vaughan to go and visit her cousin Scudamore.
He consented, and Dorothy, scarcely allowing him to pause even under
the admirable roof of the great hall as they passed through, led him
straight to the turret-chamber, where the sick man was.

They found him sitting by the fire, folded in blankets, listless and
sad.

When Dorothy had told him whom she had brought to see him, she would
have left them, but Rowland turned on her such beseeching eyes, that
she remained, by no means unwillingly, and seated herself to hear
what this wonderful young phyisican would say.

'It is very irksome to be thus prisoned in your chamber, sir
Rowland,' he said.

'No,' answered Scudamore, 'or yes: I care not.'

'Have you no books about you?' asked Mr. Vaughan, glancing round the
room.

'Books!' repeated Scudamore, with a wan contemptuous smile.

'You do not then love books?'

'Wherefore should I love books? What can books do for me? I love
nothing. I long only to die.'

'And go----?' suggested, rather than asked, Mr. Vaughan.

'I care not whither--anywhere away from here--if indeed I go
anywhere. But I care not.'

'That is hardly what you mean, sir Rowland, I think. Will you allow
me to interpret you? Have you not the notion that if you were hence
you would leave behind you a certain troublesome attendant who is
scarce worth his wages?'

Scudamore looked at him but did not reply; and Mr. Vaughan went on.

'I know well what aileth you, for I am myself but now recovering
from a similar sickness, brought upon me by the haunting of the same
evil one who torments you.'

'You think, then, that I am possessed?' said Rowland, with a faint
smile and a glance at Dorothy.

'That verily thou art, and grievously tormented. Shall I tell thee
who hath possessed thee?--for the demon hath a name that is known
amongst men, though it frighteneth few, and draweth many, alas! His
name is Self, and he is the shadow of thy own self. First he made
thee love him, which was evil, and now he hath made thee hate him,
which is evil also. But if he be cast out and never more enter into
thy heart, but remain as a servant in thy hall, then wilt thou
recover from this sickness, and be whole and sound, and shall find
the varlet serviceable.'

'Art thou not an exorciser, then, Mr. Vaughan, as well as a
discerner of spirits? I would thou couldst drive the said demon out
of me, for truly I love him not.'

'Through all thy hate thou lovest him more than thou knowest. Thou
seest him vile, but instead of casting him out, thou mournest over
him with foolish tears. And yet thou dreamest that by dying thou
wouldst be rid of him. No, it is back to thy childhood thou must go
to be free.'

'That were a strange way to go, sir. I know it not. There seems to
be a purpose in what you say, Mr. Vaughan, but you take me not with
you. How can I rid me of myself, so long as I am Rowland Scudamore?'

'There is a way, sir Rowland--and but one way. Human words at least,
however it may be with some high heavenly language, can never say
the best things but by a kind of stumbling, wherein one
contradiction keepeth another from falling. No man, as thou sayest,
truly, can rid him of himself and live, for that involveth an
impossibility. But he can rid himself of that: haunting shadow of
his own self, which he hath pampered and fed upon shadowy lies,
until it is bloated and black with pride and folly. When that demon
king of shades is once cast out, and the man's house is possessed of
God instead, then first he findeth his true substantial self, which
is the servant, nay, the child of God. To rid thee of thyself thou
must offer it again to him that made it. Be thou empty that he may
fill thee. I never understood this until these latter days. Let me
impart to thee certain verses I found but yesterday, for they will
tell thee better what I mean. Thou knowest the sacred volume of the
blessed George Herbert?'

'I never heard of him or it,' said Scudamore.

'It is no matter as now: these verses are not of his. Prithee,
hearken:

'I carry with, me, Lord, a foolish fool,
That still his cap upon my head would place.
I dare not slay him, he will not to school,
And still he shakes his bauble in my face.

'I seize him, Lord, and bring him to thy door;
Bound on thine altar-threshold him I lay.
He weepeth; did I heed, he would implore;
And still he cries ALACK and WELL-A-DAY!

'If thou wouldst take him in and make him wise,
I think he might be taught to serve thee well;
If not, slay him, nor heed his foolish cries,
He's but a fool that mocks and rings a bell.'

Something in the lines appeared to strike Scudamore.

'I thank you, sir,' he said. 'Might I put you to the trouble, I
would request that you would write out the verses for me, that I may
study their meaning at my leisure.'

Mr. Vaughan promised, and, after a little more conversation, took
his leave.

Now, whether it was from anything he had said in particular, or that
Scudamore had felt the general influence of the man, Dorothy could
not tell, but from that visit she believed Rowland began to think
more and to brood less. By and by he began to start questions of
right and wrong, suppose cases, and ask Dorothy what she would do in
such and such circumstances. With many cloudy relapses there was a
suspicion of dawn, although a rainy one most likely, on his far
horizon.

'Dost thou really believe, Dorothy,' he asked one day, 'that a man
ever did love his enemy? Didst thou ever know one who did?'

'I cannot say I ever did,' returned Dorothy. 'I have however seen
few that were enemies. But I am sure that had it not been possible,
we should never have been commanded thereto.'

'The last time Dr. Bayly came to see me he read those words, and I
thought within myself all the time of the only enemy I had, and
tried to forgive him, but could not.'

'Had he then wronged thee so deeply?'

'I know not, indeed, what women call wronged--least of all what
thou, who art not like other women, wouldst judge; but this thing
seems to me strange--that when I look on thee, Dorothy, one moment
it seems as if for thy sake I could forgive him anything--except
that he slew me not outright, and the next that never can I forgive
him even that wherein he never did me any wrong.'

'What! hatest thou then him that struck thee down in fair fight?
Sure thou art of meaner soul than I judged thee. What man in
battle-field hates his enemy, or thinks it less than enough to do
his endeavour to slay him?'

'Know'st thou whom thou wouldst have me forgive? He who struck me
down was thy friend, Richard Heywood.'

'Then he hath his mare again?' cried Dorothy, eagerly.

Rowland's face fell, and she knew that she had spoken
heartlessly--knew also that, for all his protestations, Rowland yet
cherished the love she had so plainly refused. But the same moment
she knew something more.

For, by the side of Rowland, in her mind's eye, stood Henry Vaughan,
as wise as Rowland was foolish, as accomplished and learned as
Rowland was narrow and ignorant; but between them stood Richard, and
she knew a something in her which was neither tenderness nor
reverence, and yet included both. She rose in some confusion, and
left the chamber.

This good came of it, that from that moment Scudamore was satisfied
she loved Heywood, and, with much mortification, tried to accept his
position. Slowly his health began to return, and slowly the deeper
life that was at length to become his began to inform him.

Heartless and poverty-stricken as he had hitherto shown himself, the
good in him was not so deeply buried under refuse as in many a
better-seeming man. Sickness had awakened in him a sense of
requirement--of need also, and loneliness, and dissatisfaction. He
grew ashamed of himself and conscious of defilement. Something new
began to rise above and condemn the old. There are who would say
that the change was merely the mental condition resulting from and
corresponding to physical weakness; that repentance, and the vision
of the better which maketh shame, is but a mood, sickly as are the
brain and nerves which generate it; but he who undergoes the
experience believes he knows better, and denies neither the wild
beasts nor the stars, because they roar and shine through the dark.

Mr. Vaughan came to see him again and again, and with the
concurrence of Dr. Spott, prescribed for him. As the spring
approached he grew able to leave his room. The ladies of the family
had him to their parlours to pet and feed, but he was not now so
easily to be injured by kindness as when he believed in his own
merits.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

HONOURABLE DISGRACE.

January of 1646, according to the division of the year, arrived, and
with it the heaviest cloud that had yet overshadowed Raglan.

One day, about the middle of the month. Dorothy, entering lady
Glamorgan's parlour, found it deserted. A moan came to her ears from
the adjoining chamber, and there she found her mistress on her face
on the bed.

'Madam,' said Dorothy in terror, 'what is it? Let me be with you.
May I not know it?'

'My lord is in prison,' gasped lady Glamorgan, and bursting into
fresh tears, she sobbed and moaned.

'Has my lord been taken in the field, madam, or by cunning of his
enemies?'

'Would to God it were either,' sighed lady Glamorgan. 'Then were it
a small thing to bear.'

'What can it be, madam? You terrify me,' said Dorothy.

No words of reply, only a fresh outburst of agonised--could it also
be angry?--weeping followed.

'Since you will tell me nothing, madam, I must take comfort that of
myself I know one thing.'

'Prithee, what knowest thou?' asked the countess, but as if careless
of being answered, so listless was her tone, so nearly inarticulate
her words.

'That is but what bringeth him fresh honour, my lady,' answered
Dorothy.

The countess started up, threw her arms about her, drew her down on
the bed, kissed her, and held her fast, sobbing worse than ever.

'Madam! madam!' murmured Dorothy from her bosom.

'I thank thee, Dorothy,' she sighed out at length: 'for thy words
and thy thoughts have ever been of a piece.'

'Sure, my lady, no one did ever yet dare think otherwise of my
lord,' returned Dorothy, amazed.

'But many will now, Dorothy. My God! they will have it that he is a
traitor. Wouldst thou believe it, child--he is a prisoner in the
castle of Dublin!'

'But is not Dublin in the hands of the king, my lady?'

'Ay! there lies the sting of it! What treacherous friends are these
heretics! But how should they be anything else? Having denied their
Saviour they may well malign their better brother! My lord marquis
of Ormond says frightful things of him.'

'One thing more I know, my lady,' said Dorothy, '--that as long as
his wife believes him the true man he is, he will laugh to scorn all
that false lips may utter against him.'

'Thou art a good girl, Dorothy, but thou knowest little of an evil
world. It is one thing to know thyself innocent, and another to
carry thy head high.'

'But, madam, even the guilty do that; wherefore not the innocent
then?'

'Because, my child, they ARE innocent, and innocence so hateth the
very shadow of guilt that it cannot brook the wearing it. My lord is
grievously abused, Dorothy--I say not by whom.'

'By whom should it be but his enemies, madam?'

'Not certainly by those who are to him friends, but yet, alas! by
those to whom he is the truest of friends.'

'Is my lord of Ormond then false? Is he jealous of my lord
Glamorgan? Hath he falsely accused him? I would I understood all,
madam.'

'I would I understood all myself, child. Certain papers have been
found bearing upon my lord's business in Ireland, all ears are
filled with rumours of forgery and treason, coupled with the name of
my lord, and he is a prisoner in Dublin castle.'

She forced the sentence from her, as if repeating a hated lesson,
then gave a cry, almost a scream of agony.

'Weep not, madam,' said Dorothy, in the very foolishness of
sympathetic expostulation.

'What better cause could I have out of hell!' returned the countess,
angrily.

'That it were no lie, madam.'

'It is true, I tell thee.'

'That my lord is a traitor, madam?'

Lady Glamorgan dashed her from her, and glared at her like a
tigress. An evil word was on her lips, but her better angel spoke,
and ere Dorothy could recover herself, she had listened and
understood.

'God forbid!' she said, struggling to be calm. 'But it is true that
he is in prison.'

'Then give God thanks, madam, who hath forbidden the one and allowed
the other, said Dorothy; and finding her own composure on the point
of yielding, she courtesied and left the room. It was a breach of
etiquette without leave asked and given, but the face of the
countess was again on her pillow, and she did not heed.

For some time things went on as in an evil dream. The marquis was in
angry mood, with no gout to lay it upon. The gloom spread over the
castle, and awoke all manner of conjecture and report. Soon, after a
fashion, the facts were known to everybody, and the gloom deepened.
No further enlightenment reached Dorothy. At length one evening, her
mistress having sent for her, she found her much excited, with a
letter in her hand.

'Come here, Dorothy: see what I have!' she cried, holding out the
letter with a gesture of triumph, and weeping and laughing
alternately.

'Madam, it must be something precious indeed,' said Dorothy, 'for I
have not heard your ladyship laugh for a weary while. May I not
rejoice with you, madam?'

'You shall, my good girl: hearken: I will read:--'My dear
Heart,'--Who is it from, think'st thou, Dorothy? Canst guess?--'My
dear Heart, I hope these will prevent any news shall come unto you
of me since my commitment to the Castle of Dublin, to which I assure
thee I went as cheerfully and as willingly as they could wish,
whosoever they were by whose means it was procured; and should as
unwillingly go forth, were the gates both of the Castle and Town
open unto me, until I were cleared: as they are willing to make me
unserviceable to the king, and lay me aside, who have procured for
me this restraint; when I consider thee a Woman, as I think I know
you are, I fear lest you should be apprehensive. But when I reflect
that you are of the House of Thomond, and that you were once pleased
to say these words unto me, That I should never, in tenderness of
you, desist from doing what in honour I was obliged to do, I grow
confident, that in this you will now show your magnanimity, and by
it the greatest testimony of affection that you can possibly afford
me; and am also confident, that you know me so well, that I need not
tell you how clear I am, and void of fear, the only effect of a good
conscience; and that I am guilty of nothing that may testify one
thought of disloyalty to his Majesty, or of what may stain the
honour of the family I come of, or set a brand upon my future
posterity.'

The countess paused, and looked a general illumination at Dorothy.

'I told you so, madam,' returned Dorothy, rather stupidly perhaps.

'Little fool!' rejoined the countess, half-angered: 'dost suppose
the wife of a man like my Ned needs to be told such things by a
green goose like thee? Thou wouldst have had me content that the man
was honest--me, who had forgotten the word in his tenfold more than
honesty! Bah, child! thou knowest not the love of a woman. I could
weep salt tears over a hair pulled from his noble head. And thou to
talk of TELLING ME SO, hussy! Marry, forsooth!'

And taking Dorothy to her bosom, she wept like a relenting storm.

One sentence more she read ere she hurried with the letter to her
father-in-law. The sentence was this:

'So I pray let not any of my friends that's there, believe anything,
until ye have the perfect relation of it from myself.'

The pleasure of receiving news from his son did but little, however,
to disperse the cloud that hung about the marquis. I do not know
whether, or how far, he had been advised of the provision made for
the king's clearness by the anticipated self-sacrifice of Glamorgan,
but I doubt if a full knowledge thereof gives any ground for
disagreement with the judgment of the marquis, which seems, pretty
plainly, to have been, that the king's behaviour in the matter was
neither that of a Christian nor a gentleman. As in the case of
Strafford, he had accepted the offered sacrifice, and, in view of
possible chances, had in Glamorgan's commission pretermitted the
usual authoritative formalities, thus keeping it in his power, with
Glamorgan's connivance, it must be confessed, but at Glamorgan's
expense, to repudiate his agency. This he had now done in a message
to the parliament, and this the marquis knew.

His majesty had also written to lord Ormond as follows: 'And albeit
I have too just cause, for the clearing of my honour, to prosecute
Glamorgan in a legal way, yet I will have you suspend the
execution,' &c. At the same time his secretary wrote thus to Ormond
and the council: 'And since the warrant is not' 'sealed with the
signet,' &c., &c., 'your lordships cannot but judge it to be at
least surreptitiously gotten, if not worse; for his majesty saith he
remembers it not;' and thus again privately to Ormond: 'The king
hath commanded me to advertise your lordship that the patent for
making the said lord Herbert of Raglan earl of Glamorgan is not
passed the great seal here, so as he is no peer of this kingdom;
notwithstanding he styles himself, and hath treated with the rebels
in Ireland, by the name of earl of Glamorgan, which is as vainly
taken upon him as his pretended warrant (if any such be) was
surreptitiously gotten.' The title had, meanwhile, been used by the
king himself in many communications with the earl.

These letters never came, I presume, to the marquis's knowledge, but
they go far to show that his feeling, even were it a little
embittered by the memory of their midnight conference and his hopes
therefrom, went no farther than the conduct of his majesty
justified. It was no wonder that the straightforward old man,
walking erect to ruin for his king, should fret and fume, yea, yield
to downright wrath and enforced contempt.

Of the king's behaviour in the matter, Dorothy, however, knew
nothing yet.

One day towards the end of February, a messenger from the king
arrived at Raglan, on his way to Ireland to lord Ormond. He had
found the roads so beset--for things were by this time, whether from
the successes of the parliament only, or from the negligence of
disappointment on the part of lord Worcester as well, much altered
in Wales and on its borders--that he had been compelled to leave
his despatches in hiding, and had reached the castle only with great
difficulty and after many adventures. His chief object in making his
way thither was to beg of lord Charles a convoy to secure his
despatches and protect him on his farther journey. But lord Charles
received him by no means cordially, for the whole heart of Raglan
was sore. He brought him, however, to his father, who, although
indisposed and confined to his chamber, consented to see him. When
Mr. Boteler was admitted, lady Glamorgan was in the chamber, and
there remained.

Probably the respect to the king's messenger which had influenced
the marquis to receive him, would have gone further and modified the
expression of his feelings a little when he saw him, but that, like
many more men, his lordship, although fairly master of his
temper-horses when in health, was apt to let them run away with him
upon occasion of even slighter illness than would serve for an
excuse.

'Hast thou in thy despatches any letters from his majesty to my son
Glamorgan, master Boteler?' he inquired, frowning unconsciously.

'Not that I know of, my lord,' answered Mr. Boteler, 'but there may
be such with the lord marquis of Ormond's.'

He then proceeded to give a friendly message from the king
concerning the earl. But at this the 'smouldering fire out-brake'
from the bosom of the injured father and subject.

'It is the grief of my heart,' cried his lordship, wrath
predominating over the regret which was yet plainly enough to be
seen in his face and heard in his tone--'It is the grief of my heart
that I am enforced to say that the king is wavering and fickle. To
be the more his friend, it too plainly appeareth, is but to be the
more handled as his enemy.'

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